by Veronica Morris, PhD with Bradley W. Morris, MA, CPhil
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When you’re training a service dog, there are three terms used to describe the status of your dog that are sometimes not well understood. They are prospect, service dog in training (SDIT), and service dog (SD).
What you should call your dog can depend on the context and on where you are in your training journey, so it can be a little more complex than it first appears. I’ll break it down so you can understand how the terms might apply to your situation.
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Prospect
The term prospect—short for service dog prospect—isn’t a legal term. It’s a term used in the SD (service dog) community to mean a dog that someone is training or plans to train in the hopes that they will one day become an SD.
Usually community members use the term for dogs that are not yet ready to start their public access training in no-pet places. They can have some training or none (if they’re at the start of their SD journey). The training at this stage will involve some basic obedience, going to some pet-friendly public places, and possibly some work or task training.
A temperament test is often used to help the trainer or owner pick the dog that is most likely to make it as an SD, or to determine whether your existing dog might be a good prospect.
A prospect can be any age.
Every decision you make along the way can narrow the possibilities, so an early decision about which dog to get or train as a prospect is very important in setting yourself up for success. It’s wise to first talk about this with those who’ve been there; contact us rather than jumping in without looking.
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Service dog in training
In some US states, the term service dog in training (SDIT) or its functional equivalent does have a legal meaning. Check your state laws to see whether they cover SDITs.
What an SDIT legally is can vary somewhat from state to state. Some states only cover SDITs for physical disabilities, or only cover SDITs from programs. Other states cover all SDITs, or don’t cover SDITs at all.
It is possible to consider a dog a prospect by community standards and an SDIT by a legal standard. These standards have different natures and exist for different purposes, so they can align or not.
PSDP’s community standard is not a matter of hard and fast rules, but there is a fairly clear guideline. Generally under this standard, an SDIT is a dog that is further along on the way to becoming an SD than a prospect. Usually people wait to call their dog an SDIT until their dog is ready for responsibly going out to no-pet places.
However, if you live in a state with SDIT protection in housing, you might reasonably claim a very young puppy as an SDIT to gain housing access. This is an example of where the legal definition and community standard diverge, because they exist for different reasons.
There is no required testing for SDITs. But there are some tests that are helpful in determining when your dog is ready to start going out as an SDIT, and it’s definitely good practice to use one.
PSDP has an SDIT Manners Evaluation that can help you determine when your dog is ready to go out to no-pet places as an SDIT, assuming this is legally allowed in your state. We designed it specifically for this purpose.
Other people look to the American Kennel Club’s tests like the CGC, CGCA, or CGCU to help them determine whether their dog is ready to go out as an SDIT. These tests are useful, but are not tailored to the purpose.
I think for me, the most important thing about taking your dog out as an SDIT is that you should be at least 90% sure that your dog is not going to be disruptive or destructive in a no-pets place before going there, including not barking, peeing, or pooping. You should be especially sure your dog will not be aggressive toward people or dogs. If you don’t have this confidence about your dog’s behavior, I’d say stay in prospect status a little longer and then re-evaluate.
For me, the most important things about an SDIT are that they are safe and happy to be in a working environment. Obedience cues don’t need to be perfect, but the dog must not be scared, must be happy to work, and must be unlikely to have inappropriate behaviors. I think the SDIT Manners Evaluation (ME) captures this pretty well.
Most people who start with a puppy as a prospect will be working toward the SDIT ME from the beginning, alongside the training that makes for a good pet. They often will have trained to our community’s SDIT level around 6–9 months old, or maybe even a year old depending on the pup’s development.
If someone starts with a young adult dog (six months or older), I’d say to wait until you’ve had the dog at least three months before training with your dog in no-pets places as an SDIT. This gives them the time to settle in to your household and hopefully become comfortable enough not to have setbacks based on trigger stacking/stress buildup. This period could be much longer depending on the dog’s history, training level and comfort. You always need to keep an eye on your dog’s stress and meet them where they are with your training.
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Service dog
Service dog (SD) is both a community standard and a legal concept (though in US regulations, the term is usually service animal). What is required of a service dog federally for most no-pets places is that 1) The person has a disability, 2) The dog is trained to do work or tasks to mitigate the disability, and 3) The dog is well-behaved in public (otherwise they can be kicked out).
You may notice that there isn’t a lot of space between our community standard for SDITs and this legal standard for SDs. Under federal regulations in the United States, the standards are low by design for SDs (caution: standards in courts tend to be higher). There is no testing required for public access. The basic standard is that the dog should not bark, bite, growl, eliminate inappropriately, and shouldn’t otherwise be destructive or disruptive in public.
If you look at a public access test (PAT), much more is required to meet that community standard than the regulations’ standard for public access. There is good reason for this. Lawmakers are not experts in dog training, and even experts disagree about what minimum training is appropriate. Community standards can bridge the gap between the training and the law, and disability rights mean you are empowered to decide which community standard is best to follow for you.
Having good luck may be enough for a dog to behave well in public just once or twice. But you do need some training beyond just happening to meet the legal standard. Our community standards represent the kind of training that can enable a dog to reliably behave in the ways required by the law, but across contexts and unexpected events. They’re about working to build up the psychological shock absorbers to keep up that good behavior for years of everyday life and moments of unusual strife.
It is up to you exactly how long to train your dog to ensure they’re resilient. Personally, even though I know my dog might qualify legally as an SD, I keep them as an SDIT until I know they can pass a PAT on almost any day they go out.
A PAT is a really useful milestone, but realize it is a just a snapshot in time. So a dog that is normally excellent can have a bad day and not pass. Or a dog that is normally terrible can have a good day and pass. So for me, while I do want to take a PAT and pass it on one particular day to have that sense of achievement for myself, I also wouldn’t put my dog up for a PAT unless I think that they could pass a PAT at least 90% of the time that they’re out in public.
I encourage everyone to hold themselves to the highest training standards possible. It is a wonderful right to be able to train and have a service dog to help with your disability, even where pets are not allowed. It is also a serious responsibility to others that our dogs remain safe, non-disruptive, and non-destructive when we’re out.
Generally, it takes about 2 years to train a dog to “full” SD status the way I personally define it. Sometimes it’s faster, and sometimes slower. I’ve had four SDs. Two I trained in about 2 years. One took 3 years. Felix, my current SD, took only 1.5 years. Even though I set myself up for success, I also had one wash out (she failed out of SDIT status), because it doesn’t always work out, no matter your expertise.
If you live in a state with SDIT protection, I recommend taking as long as you can to train your dog so that you can be really sure of their behaviors. People are more forgiving of minor behavior mishaps if they can see an “in training” patch!
If you live in a state without SDIT protection, then I recommend calling your dog an SD for legal protection when they meet the minimum standard, and just continuing to train *safely and appropriately* in the meantime until your dog is ready for a PAT, or is able to pass one most of the time.
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Conclusion
While dog training goes on for the life of your dog, marking milestones has practical uses and legal implications. The terms prospect, SDIT, and SD are used in the service dog community to divide up the journey of service dog training into “just starting out”, “learning the ropes”, and “professional”. It’s important to know which one(s) apply to your dog in which context, and therefore what rights you have as a team.